Posts Tagged ‘Brendan Canty’

I’m sitting on a plane heading to the UK with Brendan my son for a huge Liverpool FC match versus Borussia Dortmund. How he managed to get tickets for such a match I have no idea but then again he has always managed to do things like this with his interesting network of friends and connections.

He is absolutely buzzing as he has just won another role directing a major advert for a huge international brand. After the Budweiser, Conor McGregor “Dream Big” advert this kind of work was going to come.

His enthusiasm is infectious and I listen to his plans, how he wants to shoot the advert, who he wants to cast in it and I watch him as he quickly and seamlessly sketches out the storyboard for the advert on his notebook.

He was chatting to me about the costume girl for the advert and he has opted for Sarah who was the costume girl in one of his fantastic music videos. The problem with Sarah is that she hasn’t done commercial work before but the great thing about Sarah is that she is raw, beautiful, authentic, pure and a gorgeous fresh face that Brendan knows will deliver something very special.

Adverts are big business and the process is expensive so you need people who know what they are doing so using an unknown, unproven person is a risk so the safe thing to do is to hire someone who has done it before.

He has told me she is already proving to be a star as she has gone away and researched the role so she can immerse herself in it and she has even unearthed material that will help the overall project.

Sometimes being safe is risky and if you want something special, something that will make a real difference then take a leap of faith and go with that unproven star who could just bring you some magic.

“If your dream doesn’t scare you then it isn’t big enough. Dream as big as you dare”

These are the words that were challenging me and the strange thing is that I heard them uttered by Conor McGregor in an advert that my son, Brendan Canty directed for Budweiser.

I then hear both Conor (the apprentice plumber from Crumlin) and Brendan (the boy from Ballincollig!), two 27 year old’s from different parts of our fine country and from different backgrounds talking about “following your dream” in a behind the scenes video about the advert.

Brendan talks about throwing everything at your dream and Conor talks about following your passion.

From the outside it probably looks easy and then I think about Malcolm Gladwell and his theory about 10,000 hours in his book Outliers and I think about what I know about these two young men.

Brendan didn’t get the grade he hoped for in CIT because his lecturer had some issue with his short film “The Kid“. Take one look at thetrailer or even the full feature and make up your own mind (Brendan will kill me for drawing attention to this – this work by a student is incredible!).

He regularly pitches for videos and adverts that he doesn’t win – some of these treatments have some of his best work in them but they will never grace our screens.

He takes the kicks in the backside and drives on. Following your dream means driving on even when things happen that might leave you feeling on the floor.

Conor with all of his talent and brashness has followed his dream. I haven’t followed his story well enough to talk about his knocks but I am sure there have been many and I have no doubt that 10,000 hours of sweat, toil and disappointments are all in his ‘experience bank‘ that has him where he is today.

Okay, he took a kick in the backside in his last fight against Nate Diaz but he spoke about “celebrating defeat” ..we have to if we want to succeed!

With all this talk of dreaming I was inclined to look at my own life and what I was doing at 27 years of age and what I have done since.

The dream of a thirteen year old was to work in the music business. I flirted with managing bands for about two years, which was fun for a while and then the bands I was working with broke up!

I always wanted to start my own business and I got that chance when I started a fast food restaurant with another guy. It wasn’t my industry of choice but this ‘golden opportunity‘ to start something and make some money seemed like a good idea.

It wasn’t my dream so I talked him into opening music stores. We didn’t know the first thing about this industry but it didn’t stop us opening one in Cork, one in Limerick and one in Galway in the space of 12 months. During that time we also opened a second fast food restaurant in Cork.

We were business trailblazers but we were crazy – this rate of growth was reckless and if anything went wrong we were in huge financial trouble. Some of these ventures worked out and some of them were miserable failures.

All of this was when I was incredibly still holding down a full time job – I was working around clocks that I didn’t even have!

I was then asked if I would become the General Manager of Deasy’s, the Guinness owned subsidiary that I was the Financial Controller of. I was staggered to be asked to take on such a role and this was another dream fulfilled! After doing this for two years I was asked to join Guinness in Dublin ..wow..working in a relatively senior role for a huge international company – another dream. I was 29!

I took a job as General Manager of a subsidiary of Heineken a few years later – I quickly realised that repeating myself wasn’t part of the dream and I needed to change.

In 2001 I had a dream about creating a high end fashion and beauty event and taking it on tour around Ireland with the top Irish models. Myself and Dee created ‘Catwalks’ which was the talk of the female luxury sector in Ireland for a number of years.

Dee emigrated from Kerry to Cork and we opened a Fuzion office on the South Mall in Cork (before thatwe worked from home for a few years – thank you to Alison, Doreen and Barry who were happy to have enough faith in us to do that).

Soon after that we became the only agency in Ireland to have an office in both Cork and Dublin as we opened one in our capital city.

This year I was elected to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce council by the members – this sounds like a very trivial thing but it is a big deal as members from smaller firms find it impossible to get elected. This makes me very proud as it is a small tangible sign that we are succeeding in Dublin and achieving some recognition for the work we are doing there.

When I heard the words “If your dream doesn’t scare you then it’s not big enough” I had to admit to myself that I feared I had stopped dreaming big and maybe that I had stopped dreaming at all. After writing this piece I know this isn’t quite true.

It’s been a huge whirlwind since we got the news that the Hozier video for “Take Me To Church” had been nominated for two MTV VMA awards.

The video was produced at the end of 2013 by Feel Good Lost, my son Brendan Canty and Con Thomson’s company, on a shoestring budget. The video catapulted this unknown singer and his fantastic song to international success and nearly 330 million views later, we find ourselves heading to the awards at The Staple Centre, home of the LA Lakers in Los Angeles.

Brendan and Con are the ‘talent’ so they got to experience the whole red carpet experience, while we had to go in a different door and sit a little further back in the audience. We were expecting a theatre full of the most fashion conscious, outrageous, “bling” people you could ever imagine but this wasn’t the case.

Of course we saw a bunch of ultra-chic ‘where is my catwalk’ fashionistas at the event but we also saw a big crowd of very ordinary-looking people who looked like they were going to the cinema!

The anticipation was building and the tweets were flying, with so many good wishes coming towards us from Cork and beyond, waiting to see if their huge success could be crowned even further.

Hozier couldn’t be there and he tweeted the best of luck to the guys – even though the public vote was restricted to the U.S. many had tipped ‘Take Me To Church‘ as a winner so we had to start dreaming!

We had a few chats beforehand about preparing a ‘winning speech’ or maybe two!

I was trying to picture my boy up there with the stars saying something very profound about how “with the right passion anything is possible”. Maybe if he had enough time he would thank his dad profoundly for being the inspiration in his life and Cork might even get a mention?!

The show started on cue and Miley Cyrus kicked off proceedings.

We saw performances by artists we had never heard of, we saw lots of different and very provocative outfits by Miley, we saw footage from tandem outdoor performances from Downtown LA and we saw some of the awards being presented in double quick time by people including Britney Spears.

There were breaks in the show every 15 minutes for TV adverts and stage preparation and there were even segments thanking the different sponsors. You knew this was a TV show first and foremost as everything seemed to be very rehearsed, even the banter and occasional exchange of insults between presenters.

Taylor Swift was clearly the darling of the night with a huge entourage and lots of attention and focus on her – at least she had the class to bring on stage her video director who made his own speech. He had definitely rehearsed what he was going to say.
I started thinking about Brendan and Con going up on stage to accept an award and make a speech without a ‘star’. I was starting to have serious doubts as to whether this would not make for good TV.

Kanye West grabbed many of the headlines for his ten minute confusing ramble about… I’m not really sure to be honest! He must be the most influential person in the industry as all the VIPs stood up for his speech and unfortunately for them they felt they had to stay standing.

West was strangely nominated for an award and then went on to say how music awards are silly as no one should be there to be judged. To cap it all off he announced he was running for President in 2020. The breakfast chat with Kim will be interesting!

Miley Cyrus produced an accidental, totally on purpose revealing of her breast for the TV cameras, and then finished the night with a performance of her latest song.

We looked at each other and wondered… what about the awards we were there for?

We met with Brendan and Con who were just as confused. We discovered through twitter a band called Fall Out Boy had won Best Rock Video and were presented with that on the way into the show. Good video but it was watched 19 million times compared to the 330 million Hozier views ..I’m just saying!

We also discovered that a guy called Colin Tilley won the award for ‘Best Direction’ for the Kendrick Lamar video. Apparently they never present these technical awards at the show as it is bad for TV. Dazed and confused, our gang trooped off to an official ‘After Party’ at a place called Henrys in West Hollywood but this 50-year-old was just too tired and managed one drink and called it a day.

Los Angeles is a fantastic, unexpectedly friendly place, full of surprise and diversity and with an incredible amount to see and do. It is a place where anything is possible and anyone can become a star and even a bunch of Cork lads can walk the red carpet!

“Are you here on business or pleasure?” Is the question we have been asked over and over since we arrived in LA.

“Oh, we are here for the MTV VMA awards. My son has been nominated for two awards for the Hozier video, Take me to the Church” is my response, to the hotel staff, the taxi drivers, the barmen and even to the very serious airport security team!

These surreal words come out of my mouth and in ways I have to keep on saying them to believe them myself.

Invariably we get a “that’s fantastic” or “that’s incredible” or my personal favourite is “that’s awesome” which only the Americans can carry off properly!

LA is a much better place than I was expecting. It is a colossal mix of cultures with people on every end of the social spectrum. On the immaculate Santa Monica beach we passed all shapes and sizes of people, we were entertained by excellent buskers and we watched old fishermen on the pier.

We were passed by David and Victoria Beckham’s three children on their motorised devices while behind them a young woman rummaged through a bin. Sadly we saw plenty of that.

I heard Steven Gerrard remark recently that in LA he can go out in public without being disturbed – here they seem to take no notice of either the stars or the most organised of beggars that you will ever see.

Anything is Possible!

When asked we tell people about the Hozier video that was made in Cork for a budget that literally wouldn’t pay for our highly discounted ‘industry’ tickets for the awards ceremony.

Brendan Canty, my son and his partner in Feel Good Lost, Conal Thomson produced a powerful video for a great song that had been in the public domain for quite a while. Like so many other great songs it had gone unnoticed. Within days of being uploaded on YouTube the video went viral and this great song finally got the attention it deserved.

Anything is possible!

Over 330 million views later, Hozier is an international phenomenon and while he always gives credit to Brendan and Con the MTV VMA awards is the first time that their work has been officially recognised.

On our second night in LA with Brendan and Con we got to meet the very talented singer songwriter Gavin James from Cabra in Dublin. I predict that this terrific guy who has been signed by Capital Records in the U.S. will be a huge success. This down to earth guy who has a voice from heaven has just done a tour with Sam Smith in the U.S.

We had great fun talking about releasing a cover version of the old song by Cork band, Sultans of Ping, “Where’s My Jumper?“. He knew the words !!

Anything is possible!

He told me he is living and loving the dream but does miss his family and friends. Feel Good Lost did the video for his last single “For You” and are planning his next one.

Despite doing his video Brendan and Gavin had never met or even spoken before now. This is sadly how it goes when you move up the success ladder – there are loads of intermediaries and handlers who get involved in the process, which is after all, big business.

We chatted with Gavin about this and we all agreed that this shouldn’t happen as the ‘magic‘ can easily get lost when too many get involved – simple lesson for all of us!

While we have been here Brendan had meetings …. wait for this, in Beverly Hills and in Hollywood no less! He is now represented worldwide by a London agency called Academy Films and they organised meetings for him here.

He made all of this happen for himself – he approached his ‘dream‘ agencies with his show reel, organised follow meetings and was signed up. With the right will..

Anything is possible!

We received our instructions about collecting our show tickets. The MTV team had taken temporary office space in the Marriot hotel next to the Staples Centre, home of the LA Lakers, where the awards will take place.

The excitement is well and truly building as we collected our tickets and hospitality passes. Brendan and Con (and hopefully us at the after parties) will be rubbing shoulders with music heavyweights including Miley Cyrus (must ask her how Billy Ray is !), Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Kanye West (regards to the wife!) and Britney Spears.

Anything is Possible!

On Sunday Brendan and Con will be on the Red Carpet from 3:30pm (LA is 8 hours behind Ireland) with the ‘talent’. Unfortunately we have to go in another door!

The ‘show’ starts at 6pm,

This journey has been incredible and will continue to be I have no doubt.

When Brendan volunteered for ‘Seven brides for seven brothers‘ in transition year in secondary school it introduced him to a new circle of friends and ignited the possibility of a different career path. During the weekends and summer breaks Brendan and the guys filmed a few comedies, which were really quite good.

He chose the multimedia course in Cork Institute of Technology and then threw himself into bucket loads of projects including speculative pro-bono work, which eventually led to paying work.

There were many little steps and random projects that brought him to the Hozier video and a lot of exciting work since then including videos for Gavin James and even producing adverts for Gas Networks Ireland.

You might call him lucky to be in LA but in truth Brendan works incredibly hard, he constantly perfects his craft, he builds fantastic contacts and relationships and he is very careful (I always think too careful – you must make some money Brendan!) to only work on projects he believes in.

The most impressive aspect of LA that I have experienced is the attitude here.

Our friendly UBER taxi driver, Indy from Indonesia summed it up best for us.

“Just a quick note to say thank you. The video you created is really special; I’ve made videos for 15 years at a major label and hated nearly every single one of them…too many compromises, too many cooks….this is the treatment played out in front of us and its f**king brilliant… many many thanks”

This is a fantastic email my son Brendan Canty (he has his own production company Feel Good Lost) received after completing a recent music video project.

He tells me it was one of the smoothest projects he has worked on and one with a fantastic outcome.

They loved his original idea and he delivered it without any interference.

He tells me this is often not the case. In many projects too many people get involved, there are too many opinions, too many opposing views, too many egos and too many comprises – he is not a compromiser but sometimes he tells me you end up doing what you need to do to get a job completed.

It tells us a very simple message about engaging with any creative talent including artists/designers/professionals.

Pick the right maverick, get out of the way and then let them do what they do best ..

Brendan has just finished a fantastic music video for a talented and ‘soon to be huge‘ Irish artist Gavin James.

The track is a beautiful song called “For You“.

You already know about this video by another Irish artist called Hozier, which he also happened to direct. At the time of writing this has been watched 247,000,000 times!

Back in August 2013 my son Brendan Canty was telling me about a music video he had been working on that he was really excited about.

He had done a video for a guy called Hozier and he felt that the song was really strong and on top of that they had a cracking, possibly controversial concept for a storyline. The song had been ‘out there‘ for a while but this video might just take it to a new place. Brendan was really excited about it as he believed he had produced a special video.

As always he pulled in a bunch of talented volunteers (check out the cast below), family and friends and both he and as his partner in Feel Good Lost, Conal Thomson gave it everything. He reckoned it was his best work to date (strangely I disagree – he has done even better in my view).

I remember that day in the Fuzion office in September when he showed us the finished product. He was right, it was a really powerful, brave, fantastic, thought provoking music video. “This is going to huge” was the collective view.

Brendan uploaded the video to YouTube that day and sure enough the views came tumbling in almost immediately. Every day we watched the numbers rising and rising and then the media started featuring it. I remember at an early stage the US online news platform The Huffington Post reviewed it. Wow!

16 months later across all video platforms ‘Take me to the Church‘ has been viewed over 100 million times, Hozier is a world wide music star and the rest is history.

His follow up music video’s ‘From Eden‘ and ‘Sedated‘ attracted four and three million views respectively. These are huge numbers but obviously nothing like ‘Take me to the Church‘.

We were travelling back from Dublin by car last week with Brendan and I was asking him about his work with Hozier. Hozier is a great guy who always credits Brendan/Feel Good Lost when he is asked about the video but for some reason they have not worked together since.

I find this incredible – surely the collective team that struck gold on this video should work together? I pressed Brendan about this. He was asked to do the next video and between the jigs and reels between Brendan, Hozier and the record company they couldn’t settle on a concept.

In the end he was asked to produce the video but he wasn’t comfortable with the chosen concept so he declined. I find this to be incredibly brave and I must admire his artistic conviction. This was after a huge conversation I had with with Brendan that went something like “Are you totally nuts??!!“.

I was asking him if he thought he would work with Hozier again. He wasn’t sure but he said a very strange thing, which really struck a chord with me.

“An approach like ours would probably be considered to be too risky for him now. He is huge and he probably wouldn’t be allowed to do anything like what we did on the ‘Take me to The Church’ video as it could damage his following“.

I understood what he was saying but it didn’t stop me asking “But, isn’t that what brought him all the attention in the first place?”

Why is it that when we have nothing to lose we take risks but when we have it all to lose we end up playing it safe?

Brendan Canty: “As Take Me to Church is such a powerful and thought-provoking song we felt the video needed to be the same. We wanted to create something that challenged the audience and made them sit up and really think.

“The song is about sexuality, humanity and liberation, so after many discussions between us and Andrew (Hozier) we came up with a concept drawing on these themes and on the current situation in Russia – i.e the widespread ostracisation of homosexuals and the widespread condoning of their torture and murder. It was a real challenge for us and with a story as big as this, and a subject so topical we had to get it 100% spot on.

“The casting was crucial and our two leads (Daniel Coughlan and Emmet O’Riabhaigh) and the main thug (Patrick Sheahan) gave phenomenal performances in this video. With the help of them, the rest of the amazing cast and crew, Roger and Niall at Rubyworks and Andrew (Hozier) I feel we nailed it.”

When I do my social media courses I do a simple exercise to get the participants thinking about their online etiquette.

I ask them the following question: “What are the characteristics of people that you like doing business with?”

I see the puzzled look on their faces with many thinking ..I thought I was here to learn all about social media?

After a while they get into the exercise and I get a list that normally includes characteristics such as honest, reliable, efficient, decisive, knowledgeable, trustworthy, helpful and professional. (I do get a few mentions for ‘people who pay their bills’!)

These are big things but I also get softer characteristics, which are just as important such as passionate, optimistic, humorous and I even get a few saying I like people who are ‘like me‘!

A simple but yet powerful word that wraps a number of these things together is the word ‘Nice‘. In all of those business courses and management books do we ever hear about the magical power of being ‘nice‘ and what it can do for you?

I found myself proudly reading an article recently about my son, Brendan Canty (www.feelgoodlost.me) who directed the Hozier ‘Take me to the Church’ video, which has until the moment of writing incredibly received nearly 52 million views on YouTube.

This is one of these miraculous stories where a music video, which was done on a shoestring budget for an up-and-coming hugely talented artist called Hozier went global. The day after the filming Brendan told me that Hozier was playing in the Pavilion in Cork and that I shouldn’t miss it. Pathetically I was too busy and missed a special intimate gig as a tiny crowd were lucky enough to witness a star who was about to be born.

Brendan played me the video in the Fuzion office before it was set live and we all knew it would be special …it was a great song, with a powerful theme all captured brilliantly by Brendan and Conal of Feel Good Lost and featuring a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers.

The video erupted instantaneously online as soon as it was published and in no time it had a lot of tongues wagging and the media caught hold of it. When the Huffington Post featured it you could feel it had the potential to have a huge impact globally. Hozier deservedly won a record contract soon after and has gone onto be a huge success internationally.

You might think that Andrew Hozier-Byrne might forget about the enthusiastic troop who made this video as he laps up his newfound fame but at every opportunity this ‘nice‘ gentleman always mentions the role that Brendan and the guys played in his success.

In Brendan’s interview he was asked about how he got his first breaks in the industry and I was proud to read what he said: “I started reaching out to people online and they started reaching out to me. People are basically nice if you’re nice to them”

Nice works online and come to think of it nice works offline as well..

The sun was shining, we bought ice creams and headed off in the car in the direction of Kinsale and turned the music up loud ..

We chatted about music, work, life, the universe and a few bits in between.

We did the coastal walk from Charles Fort as far as we could go until nettles got the better of our bare white legs – shorts were not a good idea for that stroll!

I watched as my son, this young man walked ahead of me …how did he end up being 24 so quick?

We chatted some more about music, work, life, the universe and a few other bits in between.

“I’m starving” he declared … how about that guy on the bridge past Kinsale on the way to Garretstown who goes fishing a few days and then sells what he catches the other days?

Catch of the Day didn’t disappoint as we sat in the glorious sunshine on the wooden bench and munched down the Haddock, Hake and chips …. the wait was punishment (we were famished!) but so well worth it.

We chatted some more about music, work, life, the universe and a few other bits in between.

We moved onto the Speckled Door pub on the way to the Old Head of Kinsale and Brendan bought the drinks … we enjoyed a pint of Murphy’s and Bulmers respectively out the back as we looked out over the incredible view of Kinsale and watched a few young couples play with their kids (I remember when he was that young). It’s a pity Ellen (my fab daughter) couldn’t be with us today.

We chatted some more about music, work, life, the universe and a few other bits in between.

Last stop was the incredible Old Head … Brendan took me to a spot at the side of the cliffs. We stumbled upon two girls sunbathing topless and tried to walk past discreetly – I was so discreet I slipped and fell on my backside (big red face)!!

I politely stood up and continued on my way pretending I was all “cool”…

We sat and watched over this stunning view and pondered… we listened to and watched the birds (different types!) swoop in and out of the cliff face.

We watched the waves roll into the cliff face and contemplated how the thousands of years of activity has eroded the rock. The water was crystal clear.

We chatted some more about music, work, life, the universe and a few other bits in between.

Eventually it was time to go … we drove back to Cork and went back to our other lives.

We had the greatest father and son day, we didn’t quite drive a JCB but we did chat about music, work, life, the universe and a few other bits in between.

Another young hopeful prepares for their huge moment in front of the judges … will they get to Hollywood?

Of course the scene is set with their touching interviews ..this is what they have always dreamt of and if this doesn’t come through for them, their life will be over!

The big performance happens and then they wait for the judges verdict… The scene is set as the music plays in the background to heighten the drama and tension of this make or break moment.

This is American Idol…one by one, Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler give their verdicts.

Expecting to hear a simple “yes” or “no” as we have come to expect from these shows I am surprised to hear Steven Tyler, the Aerosmith legend say “not yet” to the young hopeful.

“Not yet” …I hadn’t heard that language used before on the show and it struck me that it was a really great way of rejecting the young singer in a positive manner, dealing them that dreaded news but in a way that left them feeling encouraged and that the world hadn’t ended.

I guess in the show someone had reflected on the whole Yes/No scenario and decided that there was an option and some sense of responsibility around the cold delivery of rejection – why not do it differently so that it might actually leave people feel ok about themselves and willing to possibly try again next time?

With young vulnerable people there is a particular responsibility to show encouragement even in a negative situation.

In business we all face rejection and at times we also have to do the rejecting …

“No”

“I’m not interested”

“No, it’s not for me”

“Thank you for all your efforts but unfortunately not at this time”

“Sorry, it’s not exactly what we are looking for”

“Unfortunately our budget won’t stretch that far”

– there are so many ways to say no and while it is always tough hearing it ,”not yet” or some sign of appreciation or encouragement always softens the blow.

Worse than “no” has to be the Nothing ..

My son, Brendan Canty who is new to the business world and doing really well with his music and film production company, Feel Good Lost shared some of his recent frustrations with me.

He spoke about a recent situation where he had put a fortune of work into a pitch, mocked up sample footage, presented and received encouraging feedback and then hears “nothing” back from the prospect.

He waits, he emails, he texts, he calls and despite his considerable efforts ….nothing. Then you tread a line between being pushy and just wanting some feedback. It drives him nuts, not receiving any feedback. As he says himself, he would prefer to get a clearcut “no” rather than the dreaded “nothing” treatment.

This experience bothered him so he came to me looking for some inspiration or advice … “Brendan, welcome to my world!“.

This happens in business and unfortunately it is just something that you have to live with as some people are either being rude or they just have a huge problem with saying “no”.